Church faces split on gay blessings

The Canadian Anglican church was close to endorsing same-sex blessings last night, in defiance of pressure from other parts of the 77 million-strong worldwide church communion.

A two-hour debate at the Canadian church's synod, meeting at Brock University near Niagara Falls yesterday, preceded a vote late tonight which will decide whether the church allows its 30 individual dioceses to decide for themselves whether to bless gay couples.

If it does, Canada may not only be split off from the rest of the Anglican church, led by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, but it may divide internally as well.

On Monday the synod's lay and clergy members elected the most liberal of four candidates to serve as the Canadian church's next primate, in a sign of the way the church may be moving.

Archbishop Andrew Hutchison of Montreal, 65, who was chosen on the fourth ballot against a much more conservative candidate, is a supporter of gay blessings.

He told a press conference immediately after his election: "When two human beings active in the life of the church and the body of Christ commit themselves to each other for life and ask their faith community to bless them, I have no problem with that."

The new archbishop's diplomatic skills may be called into early use if church leaders from the developing world seek to disassociate themselves from the Canadian church because of its decision.

One Cree Native American woman spoke of homosexuality as an illness and asked for more time for her community to assimilate the change.

Another, Peter Inukpuk, an Inuit from the diocese of the Arctic, told the synod: "In Genesis, male and female were placed to reproduce together. Now we're introducing the non-reproductive kind."

Others also warned against pressing forward in defiance of the rest of the Anglican communion.

Richard Salt, of the diocese of Huron, said: "If the family was 80 or 90% in one direction I would probably say the Lord has spoken, but we are nowhere near that. We are very divided and we find ourselves on the very edge of the worldwide communion. It makes it very difficult to say we have heard the Holy Spirit."

The synod's 300 delegates have spoken of little else as they have patrolled the bleak university campus, aware of the eyes of the worldwide church upon them.

Pressure has been mounting for a change in church attitudes to gays, accelerated recently by the Canadian government's decision to accept an Ontario court ruling last year that the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman was discriminatory against gays.

One of the church's dioceses, New Westminster, centred on Vancouver, has already conducted a handful of gay blessing services. The decision was condemned by church leaders in the rest of the Anglican communion. Eight of the diocese's 80 parishes, including its largest church, have split away.

There is no doubt, however, that supporters of the traditional Christian view feel themselves in a minority in the Canadian church.

One such group, called Anglican Essentials - a grouping of largely evangelical church members opposing same sex blessings - are feeling particularly oppressed.

They have some reason: one liberal clergyman even called in the police to investigate the tent they have erected in a far corner of the campus to entertain delegates, for its alleged subversiveness.

Chris Hawley, an Essentials spokesman, who is a dissident member of the New Westminster diocese, said: "We were just furious to get called in by the police. I mean, look at me...I'd be afraid to get my glasses broken if I got into a scrap with a liberal.

"We definitely feel marginalised. There is a crust of liberal leadership at the top of the church in Canada, but underneath that is not necessarily the case.

"We are not going to be leaving the church, whatever happens. Anywhere else in the world we would be regarded as mainstream Anglicans. We just want to be in communion with the Church of England."

Chris Ambidge, a spokesman for the Toronto branch of the north American gay and lesbian Christian group Integrity, manning a stall in the synod exhibition centre, said: "God has preserved His church for 2,000 years. He is not going to blow it apart over little homosexual old me."

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